Wow, it’s been a while since I was last on here- sorry ’bout that guys! Unfortunately, that may be the way my blog is heading :(

But I do have a good story today! I woke up to the sound of rain and our sump pump today. And then I heard it again, and again, and again- about every 30 seconds. Yeah… So I went downstairs to check on it and found water pouring into the crock (tank? pit?)- it would fill about 6-8″ (to the top of the float) and then empty. Then the water would pour back in and flood the pit again and the pump would kick back in. And it’s keeping up quite well despite the massive amounts of water pouring in. But there’s one problem- the discharge pipe comes out from the house, takes a 90° turn and dumps the water right along the side of our house:

This picture is from after we “remedied” the situation, but the red line shows where the pipe ended prior. Awesome.

A foot or 2 of snow + rain + 40° weather means that our ground is quite soggy. I wish I had taken a picture before we started working on the water problem, but I wanted to get the water away from our house first. Here’s what’s left of the lake on the side of our lot:

We’ll need to put in an actual drainage system this summer, as well as address some grading issues around the house, but in the meantime, we attached a 25′ flexible hose to the sump discharge pipe and dug a trench down our lot line.

I made sure it sloped downward as best I could without actually digging into the ground. It’s not perfect, but it’s working well enough for now. The hosing runs to about the front of the house, and the trench river takes the water all the way down to the road. I’m not sure if that’s the best way to do it (I couldn’t find anything specifically against it in the city rules), but it’s at least getting water away from our house!

Our pump is still pumping about every 30 seconds, so I picked up a new pump just in case (a lot of other people must have had the same idea because the shelves were looking pretty empty). Also, we’ll probably be sleeping in shifts tonight. Or I’ll be up all night making sure our pump is ok and our basement stays dry! (I did find 2 small leaks in our basement wall, but even the corner where the sump was discharging to was only slightly damp (and that’s probably being generous- the wall was just a hair darker than the surrounding walls), so for now anyway, our basement is staying relatively dry!)